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Saturday, May 10, 2008

One monster of a cookie...

Have you ever wanted a large, crunchy (yet not dry), over-the-top cookie packed with fun and tasty mix-ins? Well then, look no further than these outrageous Toffee and M&M Monster Cookies that I made before we left for our Disney trip.

Since we were bringing the pups down to the farm so they had some familiar faces watching them, I wanted to bring a treat with to say thanks. Big, thick and a fantastic crisp/chewy texture, these cookies pack a wallop of peanut butter flavor thanks to the generous addition of 1 1/2 cups chunky peanut butter. Creamy peanut butter would be fine, but I know I wouldn't want to miss out on the extra nutty crunch the chunky peanut butter added.

With just a touch of flour, the majority of the dry ingredients are simply old-fashioned rolled oats. Because of this, it is highly recommended that you allow the assembled cookie dough to rest for at least 30 minutes to give the oats a chance to absorb some of the moisture from the butter. You could probably throw whatever bits and pieces of chocolate or candy you want in these, but we choose bittersweet chocolate, toffee bits and full-sized dark chocolate M&Ms. Because I wanted them to look a little extra special, I did fuss and arrange the M&Ms on top of the dough, rather than just mixing them in with the other ingredients.

We did divide most of the dough into 1/4 cupfuls, which produced beautiful and massive bake-sale worthy cookies, but we also did scoop out a few cookies with a heaping tablespoon worth (as seen as the smaller cookie in the above photograph) to freeze and save for us. I kept the smaller unbaked dough pieces in the freezer while we were gone and have been baking them off since we got back - we enjoyed the last while writing this post. With brown sugar in the dough, the cookies already had a small, but noticeable caramel flavor in the background, but with the addition of those crunchy toffee bits, that flavor was brought out even more for a wickedly good treat. We did think that one of the best advantages to this recipe is the fact that the dough is easily mixed by hand so you don't need a mixer (a great recipe if you have little helpers around!).